BOOKS BY GIOVANNI BOCCIA ARTIERI

La polizia locale, quella più vicina ai cittadini, è presente nelle piazze delle nostre città e inizia oggi a esserlo anche nelle piazze virtuali, per offrire una nuova modalità di servizio. Ma cosa significa entrare in relazione con la propria comunità attraverso Facebook, Twitter e Instagram? Come farlo? Quali sono gli errori più comuni da evitare? Il volume intende rispondere a queste e altre domande partendo dall’esperienza, ormai matura, degli oltre 30 corpi emiliano-romagnoli che gestiscono quotidianamente una relazione con la cittadinanza sui principali social media.

Il volume affronta le caratteristiche e le ripercussioni della vita online sul benessere psicosociale di bambini e giovani, fornendo un quadro articolato e al contempo unitario del fenomeno. Autori esperti in diversi ambiti disciplinari presentano le caratteristiche distintive dell’uso e abuso delle nuove tecnologie, in particolare dello smartphone, evidenziandone elementi di forza e criticità. Un libro per studenti, studiosi, educatori, genitori e chiunque sia professionalmente e/o personalmente interessato alla problematica affrontata.

L’avvento degli smartphone e il boom dei social network hanno mutato l’universo in cui tutti noi viviamo, trasformandolo in una “casa di vetro” e abbattendo il muro tra reale e virtuale. “Ciò che si dice di qualcuno” è in grado di determinare il destino non più solo degli individui ma anche di istituzioni, aziende, organizzazioni, enti, media… Questo libro descrive non solo cosa sia la reputazione nell’era del digitale, ma come crearla, valorizzarla e difenderla.

This paper traces Lella Mazzoli’s research through two intertwined red threads that constitute the coherent figure of a research program focusing on communica-tion both as human and social, subjective and systemic process, analyzed in its irreducible complexity. The first thread is represented by the attention to the novel-ty introduced by the continuous progress of technologies, related to social effects that technologies produce and to the way in which they change people’s daily life and human relationships. At the same time, communication is a process that is recognized as a resource and tool for enhancing the people, organizations, territo-ries, communities and collective assets. This awareness has guided Lella Mazzoli’s sociological researches carried out in collaboration with economical and institu-tional actors.

The contribution analyses the social change from the point of view of the mediatization approach. The concept of mediatization has to be distinguished from that of mediation, because it identifies a meta-process of cultural and social transformation such as urbanization, globalization and individualization. This meta-process is influenced -but not determined - by media and it refers to the ability of media to spread their format or to impose specific frame in the lifeworld. On this basis, the article identifies three strands of the debate about mediatization - institutionalist, social constructivist, material - and then identifies the systemic approach as an important corrective to the limits of the three approaches. The systemic approach, using the themes of "synchronization" and "irritation" among the social systems and the "media logics" shows how the mediatization is a complex process that must also include non-media factors and agency of subjects. In summary, the mediatization is a meta-process that can not be reduced to specific techno-communicative devices and therefore has a more abstract generalized valence. But at the same time the mediatization does not incorporate an (average) unitary logic and therefore can only be observed through the specificity of the media practices. Ultimately the mediatization is not proposed as a new paradigm or as a middle-range theory. Rather it is a guiding concept for the empirical exploration of the social transformations that takes into account how it is today intensified media’s saturation of social interaction.

La ricerca qui presentata ha come oggetto le pratiche di comunicazione visuale su Twitter avvenute in occasione del terremoto che ha colpito zone dell’Emilia Romagna, Lombardia e Veneto il 20 maggio 2012. A partire dall’analisi di un campione di 4.256 immagini circolate durante il primo giorno di scosse, il lavoro ha individuato come la produzione e diffusione di queste immagini su Twitter: 1. abbia svolto una funzione sia informativa che relazionale; 2. abbia prodotto una narrazione dell’evento traumatico orientata al presente, contribuendo a ristabilire un dominio simbolico all’interno di un evento traumatico come può essere un terremoto.

Content created by users online (UGC) is a new kind of research topic in the field of social sciences and it gives us particularly promising data. Defined as qualitative data, it is undeniable that being spontaneously created by the users for an unknown audience places them in a particular condition. In addition to it we have to consider the consequences, for the empirical research, of the ease with which those data are researched and found. This paper focuses on how Big Data are changing the way we are thinking and conducting the research. They lead us to the Computational Social science, which enables a transdisciplinary approach: a sociological observation of online social phenomena using methods of data managing and data collection borrowed from the computer science. As a consequence, we are able to analyze in depth a wide range of data as never before, facing a scenario rich both of opportunities and critical points to not understate. It is necessary, at this point, to keep clear in mind structures and affordances of the platforms, characteristics of the analyzed network, the relation between online conversations and social ties and in the end, all of the previous points have to be framed in a longitudinal perspective in order not to push down the data in an eternal present avoiding to consider their evolution over time.